Rebecca A Withey: Have you ever hidden your deafness from others? (BSL)

During the show she revealed that she has been hiding her deafness and the fact that she wears hearing aids from everyone she comes into contact with for over 12 years.

Georgia explained how she recently made the decision to share the truth about her deafness and her life in order to help inspire others, by firstly sharing a post online which read:

“Chances are, most of you reading this would have no idea I was born moderately deaf in both ears and have worn hearing aids since 17 months old.”

During her appearance on Good Morning Britain Georgie described how she has gone to great lengths to hide her deafness from others, obscuring her hearing aids, removing them when her hair was up and even refraining from asking for subtitles on the television or at the cinema so she didn’t appear “deaf.”

Explaining her reasons behind this, Georgia divulged that she grew up as the only person that she knew who wore hearing aids and how she always harboured a sense of shame around her deafness.

Seeing television stars such as Tasha Ghouri (of Love Island) and Rose Ayling-Ellis (Eastenders, Strictly Come Dancing) embrace their deafness, Georgia was inspired to reveal the news about her own deafness with the rest of the world.

Watching Georgia describe her experience, I initially felt quite baffled by the extreme lengths she went to in order to hide a part of herself. After much contemplation about the topic, it actually made me feel quite sad.

It seems that deafness is not always seen as something to be “proud” of in the mainstream eye and quite often it’s viewed as a flaw to be embarrassed about.

This all stems from the medical model which sees deaf people as being broken and needing to be fixed. Therefore it isn’t any wonder that without the social and cultural element which supports a positive deaf identity, a person may grow up feeling shameful about their deafness and may learn to view it as something they need to hide away or cure.

I went through a brief phase as a teenager where I wanted to keep my hearing aids out of view.

I refused to wear my hearing aids when I was out and about and if I had to have them in at school I’d keep my hair down and discreetly hide the unsightly wires from the radio aid that hung down my neck from my ears.

That said, I don’t think I was truly ashamed of being deaf, it was more that I hated the equipment that made me look different to everybody else. The technology was all so clunky, big and just plain ugly.

I had deaf role models in my life so I cannot imagine I would ever hide the fact that I was deaf as I had already accepted this as part of me.

Yet I am sure there are others – like Georgia – who are doing all they can to keep their hearing aids and their deafness out of plain sight.

To those people I would likely to kindly assure you that being deaf – with any level of deafness – really isn’t something that you should ever be ashamed of. You haven’t done anything wrong and you’re not less of a person just because you wear a hearing aid or have a hearing loss.

The right people – when they know about your deafness – will still love and support you and keep you in their lives. They will also do all they can to make your life as accessible and easy as possible.

Don’t hide away or try to change who you are to fit into a social “norm.” There is no real “normal” anyway. We are all different.

As Georgie Meacham explained, hiding her deafness was like having a second full time job as it went into everything she did and took so much of her energy.

I hope Georgia feels a weight off her shoulders now and that anyone reading this who has been hiding in anyway feels encouraged to be true to who they really are.

Deafness. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Rebecca A Withey is a writer, consultant and creative artist based in the Midlands. She fronts the all deaf sign performance group Unify and is the Assistant Editor for The Limping Chicken. Rebecca is a Deaf, bilingual BSL user passionate about music and telling stories. Find out more at www.rawithey.com